Bloom Where You Are Planted

Do you participate in Inbox Dollars? Have you heard of it? Basically, they inundate you with sales offers, and you can earn a tiny bit of cash by putting up with them.

I have an email address I use just for Inbox Dollars. They send you emails which you are paid $.02 each to read. They are ads, of course. They send you survey offers, special promotional offers, and they have an area called "tasks" for which you are paid to perform some minor tasks. I haven't tried any of the tasks yet, but who knows, one of these days I just may get around to it. Stranger things have happened.

You save up your earnings and can cash out anytime you hit $30. I have been doing this for 6 months or so, and am cents away from my first $30. To be honest, I make an effort for a week or so, then ignore them weeks on end.

Today I filled out an application for a Discover card which has a $50 bonus if you spend $500 the first 3 months. For using their link and being approved, Inbox dollars will pay me an additional $15. I believe I will wait for this to be credited, then request a check for $45.

If anyone is interested, you can get a $5 sign-up bonus by using the following link. I get some sort of bonus too, a percentage based on your activity (does not impact your earnings):

http://www.inboxdollars.com/?r=ref7642239

This will be mortgage chip money, along with my $50 Discover bonus.

I'm supposed to be underway to BF's right now, but here I sit waiting for a tow truck to give me a jump start. My car battery is dead.

My car is a 2005 Honda Accord. The original car battery died at 35k miles. The dealer sent a tow truck, towed it and replaced the battery at their expense (still under Honda's 36k mile warranty). My car has 73k miles now, and the second battery is dead. I am beginning to suspect that Honda does not provide good batteries. This tow and new battery is on me.

I intend to spend the night at BF's tonight and Monday night. I am attending a 1 day class in a city near BF's home tomorrow for work. Hopefully, I will be underway soon so that we can enjoy the evening together.

Are you pessimistic or optimistic about your future?

As I obsess about my budget, I realize that I am optimistic. I can envision finding ways to trim expenses and divert a bit more towards long-term goals. I anticipate hitting 10k in my general savings account, and diverting some of those budget dollars elsewhere. I anticipate eliminating my credit card debt and diverting those dollars elsewhere. I anticipate that my next raise will be put to excellent use, not just mysteriously disappear into expense-creep.

And on 1/15, I will know exactly how recent payroll tax and witholding table changes will impact my take-home pay. I just may have a few extra dollars to put towards my wealth building efforts.

Yes, definately optimistic.

I've been sprucing the place up. Did you notice? What do you think?

I have a general savings account, a "piddly" account (change from my wallet), and a savings account specifically for our trip to Egypt (hopefully 2012).

I have decided to open yet another, and fund it with dollars I don't spend from my "cash allowance" budget item. These dollars are intended to pay for clothing, grooming, splurges, etc. I will open it at Ally. At the moment, I have $63 in my wallet, with 9 days to go until payday. On payday, I will withdraw $80 (as per my budget )and deposit whatever bills I have left. I will then transfer them to my newest savings account. I think this method will help me to not fritter away the dollars in my wallet.

What shall I name it? Helen? No, that seems silly.

Boyfriend spent the weekend, and was still at my house this morning. As I was getting ready for work, he made our breakfast and packed my lunch. Awwww. When I opened my lunch today, he had written a mushy note on my napkin. What a guy! He is so sweet.

I will tag this "spending", as he contributed to my efforts to spend less on lunch. See? This post is COMPLETELY financial.

This morning I changed my Netflix plan from 3 dvds to 1 (unlimited), thereby reducing spending by $8 per month.

A small step, but in the right direction.

I was playing around with mint.com yesterday, and decided to make some changes I decided that instead of tracking a lot of small expenses, I would lump them together and give myself a cash amount monthly to cover them. Further, I decided that I will not leave any amount unbudgeted, but will strive to leave the excess sitting in my checking account, to be used when irregular expenses crop up. If either the amount in my checking account or my cash on hand builds up to an amount I feel is excessive, I will then deposit some into savings.

I just transferred $1310.00 (1285.00 + 25.00 credit card rewards) to the mortgage. The extra has reduced payment #359 to $645.71. Payment #360 is already gone. The balance is now $183,845.41.

Here is a snip from my spreadsheet:

Notes:

1. "Cash in bank" is a summation of all cash accounts.
I keep the bulk of my cash at Ally to earn as much interest as I can.

2. "Trad IRAs" is a summation of my traditional IRA and my SIMPLE IRA, my employer's plan. These have the same exact purpose, providing monthly income post-retirement, so I view them as one pot of money.

3. I use Zillow to estimate my home value and Kelley Blue Book to estimate my car value.

Income:

Net pay 2970.00
Child support 452.00
Total Income 3422.00

Outgo:

Mortgage 1285.00
Utilities 428.00
Life Ins 42.00
Car Ins 125.00
Groceries 500.00
Pest Srv 31.00
Visa 400.00
B of A 60.00
Grooming 80.00
Gym 82.00
co-pays 50.00
Savings 100.00
Roth 100.00
Egypt 50.00

Total 3333.00

Unbudgeted: 89.00


Notes:

Utilities includes electric, gas, water, sewer, garbage, telephone, and internet.

Groceries includes household supplies.

Car ins is paid semi-annually.

Visa is not debt repayment, but my budget for gas, Netflix, newspaper, and any other charges.

So today in the mail at work, I received a Christmas card from a client, with a $100 bill tucked inside. How nice!

This evening, my nephew unexpectedly handed me some cash, $310. (My nephew has been living with me for about 1.5 years. He has been having some health problems, some personal problems, and some financial problems. He hasn't been able to pay anything at all towards household expenses since April. Until today that is.)

Yay!!

Well, I paid Chase Freedom in full today. I am sad that my whole bonus plus more went to it, but on the other hand I am glad I was able to pay it.

Is the glass half empty or half full?

I was pleasantly surprised to read about the 2011 Fica Tax rate. It is going down from 6.2% to 4.2%. However, the Making Work Pay credit expires. That credit was worth $400. For some this will be a wash. Those who earn more than 20k will see a bump in their take home pay.

Now, how best to use it?

So we had our annual Christmas dinner, and it was an enjoyable evening as always. I did get a very nice bonus this year for $1750, which I felt was very generous. Also, it is just nice to feel that your efforts are appreciated!

So, I am considering how to best use it. It will almost pay the remaining balance on my Chase Freedom in full. However, I am leaning towards $1500 to Chase and $250 in my Roth. I do fret that I won't hit my Roth goal of 150k.

I realize I haven't really blogged about my income. I have an office type job and made 48k this year, including seasonal overtime and bonus. I also receive child support of 6k per year. It's not a huge income, but I am happy to have it. I have certainly lived on less.

Well tonight is bill paying evening, and I am encouraged by the difference 2 weeks of being careful with my spending has made already. I have just paid all of my bills for the month, made small savings account deposits, paid $500 towards Chase Freedom, and have 785.99 left. Not bad! I expect to hang on to about half of that, spend about half on groceries, gifts, and a few outings while son is out of school for Christmas break.

I still owe 1873.99 to Chase. Bleh. Hopefully, my Christmas bonus will take care of most of it.

I received a rewards check from my Chase Freedom card in the amount of $25. I intend to use it to take a little chip out of my mortgage.

Also, I received an email from HauserNet that I have been assigned a project and I should expect to begin receiving some decoy mail in the coming weeks. That income will also be used for mortgage chips.

I am going back and forth about using my theoretical Christmas bonus towards my Chase Freedom Visa bill 100%, or splitting it out 40/20/20/10/10 and transferring still more to my Bank of America Visa.

This Friday night, I will know for sure if my bonus is only theoretical or wonderfully real.

So yesterday I purchased my first Christmas gift of the season. I bought a Kinect Fun Package for my son. With tax and shipping, $283.

I will send my daughter a check. She is 20, living in another state, and will decide for herself how to spend the check.

Other than that, I am not certain if I am buying anything else. My boyfriend has been hinting that he can't afford much this year. So I may simply suggest we don't exchange gifts. My Mom and I never exchange gifts. My nephew cannot afford to buy gifts, though I may get him a little something anyway. I will help my son pick out something for his father. (At 20, my daughter can handle this herself if she chooses.)

Gifts just aren't much of a priority in my family.

I have dreamed of extensive foreign travel since I was a young girl. To date, I have done some traveling but not nearly as much as I would like.

In the US, I have seen the west and mid-west states very thoroughly, have cruised to Alaska, have visited Memphis, Washington DC, and the state of Virginia. Still quite a bit of the US I would like to see.

Internationally, I once spent 2 weeks touring Ireland, and 2 weeks touring China (different trips). Currently, I am saving towards visiting Egypt. I plan to take my son on this trip, my boyfriend, and my cousin. I will be paying for myself and my son only.

I have been thinking I need to have a standard allocation for extra income. I don't mean tiny amounts such as from decoy mail, but the occasional large chunk of extra money. In the past, I have decided on a case by case basis how to best use each cash infusion, but I want to stop doing that.

Here is my extra money allocation:

40% credit card debt
20% Roth IRA
20% regular savings
10% Egypt savings
10% mortgage

Once my credit card debt is gone, I will decide on a new allocation.

There is a reason I have been thinking about this lately. I usually get a Christmas bonus. I hope that will be true this year as well, but of course I can't count on it. Also, it is almost the time of year for seasonal overtime at my place of employment. I will literally be able to work all of the overtime I can stand for several months. The way it is handled is to record the overtime, then pay it all in one sweet check at the end of the high-volume period. In addition, a bonus is traditionally paid.

I have received my Chase Freedom card statement, and it is big again. This is no surprise, I already knew it would be. I had been thinking I would cash flow it (I expect to be able to do that, no transfer from savings required), but now I am thinking I won't. I am thinking I will do a balance transfer one last time, making my B of A Visa bigger yet.

I am determined that this will be my last big statement.

I have set some specific financial goals which I would like to reach before retirement. Reaching them is possible, though not a slam-dunk. This is another big reason I decided I had to get my over-spending in check. Here they are:

1. Have 600k in traditional IRA. This is for regular monthly income. At a 4% withdrawal rate, 600k would provide 24k annually (2k monthly) of income. Supplemented by SS benefits, this should afford me a modest yet comfortable existence.

2. Have 150k in Roth IRA. This money is for covering large irregular expenses which will come up from time to time. Home repairs, home maintenance, vehicle replacement. The point of having this fund is so I can (hopefully) avoid debt.

3. Be mortgage free. I am uncertain at this point if this will be in my current home, or if I will sell and move elsewhere. Wherever I am living, I would like to not have a mortgage.

I am single, so this nest egg is intended to support only one person.

Today is my Mom's 78th Birthday! I am taking her to dinner at her favorite restaurant tonight. My son, my nephew, and my boyfriend will also be going. I will be paying. :P

My Mom lost her second husband this year. She and my Dad were married for 34 years (they married very young) before she was widowed. She was married to her second husband for 28 years and now she is a widow again. I am just glad to still have her!

I have noticed that we hardly ever watch regular TV. Since Lost concluded, there's just not much on that's a priority. We love our Netflix account, we use that quite a bit, and it is very economical. So I called and cancelled, and that means I now have an extra $40 a month.

I'm working on my budget and will post it soon. I imagine that Mint will point out what is realistic and what works, and that will help me fine-tune as I go along.

Brown-bagged it again today, shaping up to be another no spend. Although, I did give my nephew $3 for bus fare this morning.

I discovered mint.com tonight. So far, I love it! We will see how I do.

I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work. I spent $43.44.

I just experienced sticker shock at the pharmacy. I have a new Rx from my doctor, it is one I will be taking from now on. After insurance, my cost is $127.51. Yikes! I asked if there is a generic, there is not. The pharmacist suggested my doctor could prescribe something similar. I hope so, because it is not life or death so I am not paying $127.51 every month for it. I left the pharmacy without it.

I did pick up my other Rx ($10, now that's more like it) and 2 bottles of conditioner on sale, as well as an over-the-counter allergy medication and 2 pair of mittens. Grand total $35.96.

I did not go out for lunch. Again!

Third no spend day in a row. Yay!

Although, I did part with some funds. I paid a utility bill. I don't think that counts as spending, does it?

I also deposited my coins into the savings account I refer to as my piddly account. There is nothing in it but coins from my wallet, plus interest.

Tomorrow I have to pick up my prescriptions and I need to buy some conditioner, so tomorrow will not be a no spend day.

Years ago, I was a decoy mail agent. Following my divorce, I moved to a new zip code (same city) and so I lost my spot. I have since checked periodically to see if they need a new agent in my zip code.

Well....they finally need me! I received my confirmation today; I am officially an agent again. It will likely take some time to build my volume again, but eventually I will make a few hundred dollars a year for something which takes only a few seconds of my time. Yay!

I intend to use this extra cash to chip away at my mortgage.

This blog must be helping, because I did not spend a single cent either today or yesterday! Tracking is very easy when you have spent $0.